Plasmonic Properties of Gold Nanostructures on Gold Film

This paper reports on a systematic study of the plasmonic properties of periodic arrays of gold cylindrical nanoparticles in contact with a gold thin film. Depending on the gold film thickness, it observes several plasmon bands. Using a simple analytical model, it is able to assign all these modes and determine that they are due to the coupling of the grating diffraction orders with the propagating surface plasmons travelling along the film. With finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations, it demonstrates that large field enhancement occurs at the surface of the nanocylinders due to the resonant excitation of these modes. By tilting the sample, it also observes the evolution of the spectral position of these modes and their tuning through nearly the whole visible range is possible. Such plasmonic substrates combining both advantages of the propagative and localised surface plasmons could have large applications in enhanced spectroscopies.

     

Innovative surface characterization techniques applied to immunosensor elaboration and test: Comparing the efficiency of Fourier transform-surface plasmon resonance, quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation measurements, and polarization modulation-reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy

Three sensitive and original transduction techniques have been used to monitor the immobilization of anti-rabbit immunoglobulins (anti-rIgGs) and the detection of rIgGs on gold transducers. Polarization modulation-reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy (PM-RAIRS), quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation measurements (QCM-D), and Fourier transform-surface plasmon resonance (FT-SPR) were combined to achieve the best sensitivity and a large dynamic range in the target detection step. Their performances were compared after having checked that the layers adsorbed on the three different gold substrates were identical. The studied immunosensors were elaborated by building a thiolamine layer on gold surface, followed by its derivatization by glutaraldehyde and covalent binding of a monoclonal secondary IgG. The antibody attachment step was monitored in a wide range of concentrations (1-50 μg/ml). Then the built immunosensors were used to detect the rIgG recognition. PM-RAIRS analyses, performed under air, supplied ex situ data, whereas FT-SPR and QCM techniques were used in situ, enabling on-line detection of recognition processes. Interestingly, the three techniques suggested that the antibody coverage gets saturated for approximately 20 μg/ml in solution. In the very low concentration range (1 μg/ml), antibody binding was detected by the three techniques, but FT-SPR leads to an intense signal with a wavenumber shift of approximately 30 cm⁻¹; one may expect, by FT-SPR, a detection limit of the order of a few tenths of μg/ml. Ongoing experiments aim at determining the limit of detection and dynamic range of the very promising FT-SPR technique.     

Catalytic activity and thermostability of enzymes immobilized on silanized surface: Influence of the crosslinking agent

In this work, we investigate the influence of crosslinkers on the operational and heat stability of immobilized enzymes on a silanized silicon surface. To this end, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH), a model multimeric enzyme, was attached through bifunctional crosslinkers able to bind covalently the ?NH₂ in the silane layer and of amine residues in the enzyme. Five bifunctional crosslinkers in the form of “X-spacer-X” were used, differing by the reactive functional groups (X = aldehyde: ?CHO, isothiocyanate: ?NCS, isocyanate: ?NCO), by the nature of the spacer chain (aromatic or aliphatic) or by the geometry (bifunctional groups positioned in meta- or para- on an aromatic ring). A thermostability enhancement has been obtained for enzymes immobilized using 1,4-phenylene diisothiocyanate (PDC) and 1,4-phenylene diisocyanate (DIC). Moreover, using the latter crosslinker, activity was the mostly preserved upon successive uses, thus giving the best operational stability achieved. Changing the geometry of the cross-linker, i.e., 1,4- as compared to 1,3-phenylene diisothiocyanate (PDC and MDC, respectively), has a crucial effect on operational and thermal stabilities. Indeed, among all used crosslinkers, the most important loss was observed for MDC (residual activity after 6 times use is ~16%). Using dialdehyde crosslinkers: glutaraldehyde (GA) and terephtalaldehyde (TE), activity was significantly less well preserved than with DIC and PDC (for GA and TE, a loss of about 50% at 30 °C against no loss for PDC and DIC).These effects can be explained by a multipoint attachment model, in which a higher number of anchoring points stabilizes the three-dimensional structure and especially the binding of the two subunits in the active dimer, at the expense of a greater rigidity which is detrimental to the absolute activity. The differences observed with the crosslinkers are mainly due to steric hindrance at the interface which seems to be greatly influenced by the structure and the reactivity of the linkers.